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Coming into this hockey season, Brent Johnson was even more of an afterthought than usual. After leaving Johnson in the press box to watch games and leaving him on the bench to watch practices at the end of last season in favor of Olaf Kolzig and Christobal Huet, the Caps replaced those two aging starters with former NHL MVP Jose Theodore. Johnson battled through training camp to regain his NHL backup job against a couple of highly regarded European teenagers, and figured to start 20 games in Theodore's shadow, while possibly taking up a few new hobbies and obsessively rereading Dostoyevsky's seminal Notes from the Underground.
Yesterday, the NHL named Johnson its third star for the previous week. The honor followed three consecutive starts with a 2-0-1 record, including wins against (then) division leaders New York (R) and Carolina. Not one to rest on this entirely unexpected laurel, Johnson followed it up with a win last night against Tampa Bay and their new backup, the aforementioned Caps star Olaf Kolzig. The win extended Johnson's unbeaten streak to four games, but it also legitimized him as a Capitals goalie in a manner equivalent to Siegfried's defeat of Wotan, Luke's conquest of Darth Vader, or W's execution of Saddam Hussein.
Kolzig, for his part, said some really nice things following last night's loss to 19 of his close friends and former teammates. The veteran of 16 Capitals seasons told the Post's Tarik El-Bashir that Johnson has emerged as a goalie, and that he (Kolzig) feels proud of him. Even though Johnson has become as good a goalie as his longtime mentor, he's still got a long way to go before he proves himself quite as classy.
Photo by Eli Resnick
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I've been a Kolzig fan for as long as I've been a Caps fan. I made sure my seats were in the visitors end so I could see him in action and I championed for him to make a come back in the off season last year, we could have used his aggression in net against the Flyers who got in Huet's face and took him off his game.
But for some reason I feel like I'm the only Caps fan who doesn't have a glazed over look of wild-eyed reminiscent joy when he comes back to the phone booth. After he pealed his name plate off his locker he should have retired. He should have finished out his career as a Capital instead of taking a one year contract as a backup with Mr. Mullet's not-so-all-stars.
And while he's been pretty classy through the last tumultuous year, let's not forget that Johnson doesn't break sticks after goals or wreck the locker room after getting pulled. Kolzig was great for us for almost his entire career, but he was not without downs to balance his ups.
Sadly, Olie looked like the goalie we gave up: Swiss cheese behind a bad defense. Easy goals in the beginning and then he wakes up and defends the net, but too late to mean anything.
Johnson, while no Huet, looks like he should be getting the number 1 job shortly while pretty boy Theo will get to work on his flock of hollywood hair. I still think we should have kept Huet and with the way Johnson is playing would we'd have the best 1-2 combo in the league.
Well Huet wanted a longer contract, about 4 years, and since word on the street seem to suggest we have the greatest goalies on the cusp in our system, it just wasn't the right thing.
Also, my understanding is that he wasn't too into talking to GM GM. And you know, he and his wife wanted to go some place more European. Apparently Montreal and DC weren't international enough, so they had to choose Chicago.
That's okay. If there's one thing Chicago has less of than European flair, it's cups.
@ Jeslett: Yeah Chicago have three banners up at the United Center... which just happens to be three more than the Caps have at Verizon.
Yes, but your user name is a lot like the Blackhawks, a downward spiral. Chicago hasn't won a cup since 1960-61. That's 14 years before the Caps were founded, making comparisons a bit difficult.
I agree that the Caps don't have too much to stand on as far as cup sized successes go, but we've never been declared the worst franchise in professional sports nor have we endured a 47 year drought. And in the past 10 years Chicago has only made the playoffs once to the Caps 5 appearances.